Walter Marsh

Port Willunga beach / Tirranangku is one of the most beautiful places I know. Visited today for the first time in months and it hit me right in the guts:

The killing code: strange symbols in a WA settler’s diaries lay bare frontier atrocities Exclusive: Stories of murders passed down by Yamatji elders are confirmed by a cipher hidden in the 1850s journals of prominent pastoralist Major Logue. Now descendants on both sides want to break the...

Well worth a read — one story that captures the tensions of writing history in this country, from descendants defensively gatekeeping primary sources, to the cottage industry of small publishers, to the First Nations communities that always knew the truth:
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Big turnout this afternoon on Kaurna Yarta, marching across King William St bridge to Parliament House

The barriers keeping Adelaide musicians off the stage - InReview | InDaily, Inside South Australia A government-backed industry showcase’s failure to accommodate emerging artist Nat Luna has stoked a bigger conversation about accessibility.

“How many singers and songwriters do we have, that have all these beautiful stories to tell, but they can’t get on the stage to do that?"

A state government-backed industry showcase drew criticism after failing to accommodate an artist who uses a wheelchair:

www.indailysa.com.au/inreview/mus...

Thanks Jeannine 🙏

Pre-order links for UK and US editions of The Butterfly Thief — with alternative cover 🦋

🇬🇧 scribepublications.co.uk/books-author...

🇺🇸 scribepublications.com/books-author...

‘Theatre is incredibly wasteful’: the grassroots effort to put sustainability centre stage - InReview | InDaily, Inside South Australia Shocked by waste across Adelaide’s performing arts scene, a stage manager began finding second homes for old set pieces — and has inspired similar efforts interstate.

“I have discovered this amazing creative community all over Adelaide; teachers, art teachers, drama teachers, independent artists, people working in schools, all kinds of people are now on that page and ask for the craziest stuff.”

www.indailysa.com.au/inreview/the...

Imagine the public outcry and Murdoch media beat-up if Australia allowed the China lobby to define sinophobia then enacted censorship on the PRC's behalf. Yet that's exactly what's happening with Israel and antisemitism.

🦋 My new book ‘The Butterfly Thief: adventure, empire, and Australia’s greatest museum heist’ is out in Australia/UK/US from October via @scribepub.bsky.social 🦋

Pre-order here: scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/the-butterfly-thief-9781761381478

Our cat loves to browse books at night

Someone needs to tell our university executive class too:

Speaking out on Gaza: Australian creatives and arts organisations struggle to reconcile competing pressures As cultural institutions respond to political statements on the war, many artists say they face a choice between career opportunities and standing up for their beliefs * Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email When Michelle de Kretser accepted the 2025 Stella prize on 23 May, the celebrated author shared a warning. “All the time I was writing these words, a voice in my head whispered, ‘You will be punished. You will be smeared with labels as potent and ugly as they’re false,’” De Kretser told the Sydney writers’ festival crowd. “‘Career own goal,’ warned the voice.” Continue reading...

Speaking out on Gaza: Australian creatives and arts organisations struggle to reconcile competing pressures

He’s been hanged, stabbed and cut in galleries – now artist Carlos Martiel is being buried alive The Afro-Latinx artist pushes his body to the extreme in performances taking on racism, colonialism and police brutality. He’s heading to Tasmania’s Dark Mofo festival to be buried in sand In 2022 in a Los Angeles gallery, Carlos Martiel placed a noose around his neck and suspended his nude body from a rope tied to the ceiling. The piece was titled Cuerpo, Spanish for “body”, and the photographs and footage alone are shocking, mournful and distressing, as volunteers take turns holding his body aloft to prevent the real risk of asphyxiation. In conceiving the work, the Cuba-born, New York-based Afro-Latinx artist viewed hundreds of photographs of public lynchings from across the US – a brutal history of normalised extrajudicial violence that has moved artists from Billie Holiday to film-maker Steve McQueen. Those lynchings were also a kind of public performance: of terror, dehumanisation and white supremacy. Continue reading...

He’s been hanged, stabbed and cut in galleries – now artist Carlos Martiel is being buried alive

He’s been hanged, stabbed and cut in galleries – now artist Carlos Martiel is being buried alive The Afro-Latinx artist pushes his body to the extreme in performances taking on racism, colonialism and police brutality. He’s heading to Tasmania’s Dark Mofo festival to be buried in sand

“When I was finally taken down and went into the gallery director’s office to rest, I cried inconsolably for about 20 minutes. That had never happened to me before.”

I profiled Carlos Martiel ahead of his Dark Mofo performance: www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

“We saw the worst of systems and the best of people” - @jennifermills.net.au on how a pandemic in Italy informed her spec fic novel Salvage, which we launched tonight ✨ www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781761563775/

Book tour details: Tarntanya/Adelaide – June 5 launch with Walter Marsh at the State Library of South Australia Gadi/Sydney – June 12 in conversation with Intan Paramaditha at Better Read Than Dead Newtown Naarm/Melbourne – June 19 in conversation with Jinghua Qian at Readings Carlton nipaluna/Hobart – July 10 Just added! At Fullers bookshop.

Cover of Salvage: a starry sky overlays a dirt road

Book tour starts next week! All the details at jennifermills.net.au/events

The ‘dangerous’ Australian women whose art was dismissed, forgotten – and even set on fire A new exhibition celebrates 50 globetrotting women who traded parochial Australia for European modernity to create ‘subtly subversive’ art * Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email When Justine Kong Sing stepped off a steamship into Edwardian London, the Nundle-born daughter of a Chinese merchant could tell straight away she was a long way from Australia: amid the “roar and rush” of the city, no one seemed to notice her. “In the colonies, where foreigners are treated differently, an Oriental suffers keenly the mortification of being stared at, and often assaulted, because of his color!” she wrote in a widely published account. Continue reading...

The ‘dangerous’ Australian women whose art was dismissed, forgotten – and even set on fire

Local First Nations author denied literary prize over Palestine post - InReview | InDaily, Inside South Australia An unpublished novel about the Stolen Generations won a fellowship from the State Library of Queensland — until the Queensland Government found a tweet by its author.

An unpublished novel about the Stolen Generations won a prestigious $15,000 fellowship from the State Library of Queensland – until the Queensland Government found a tweet by its author.

www.indailysa.com.au/inreview/boo...

Couple of thoughts on this: 1) Bogan's are the country's strength, like a rottweiler. 2) If this guy is responsible for "Bogan English" becoming a dialect of Australian English, I think that is only to the advantage of the culture. 3) I often joke that Australia is "hot Russia". I feel vindicated.

A single bee with a black body and orange tip to its abdomen, pinned into a white cardboard box with several layers of labels below.

Specimens in #museums tell both scientific & human stories.
Scientifically this individual #bee at @nhm-london.bsky.social was used to describe a new species.
Socially, the bee was collected on the Younghusband Expedition, when Britain invaded Tibet and killed 2-3000 people in 1903-4. #NaturesMemory

By calling a genocide a genocide, Andor just made its most political point yet Tony Gilroy’s Star Wars show has repeatedly felt like it was ripped from today’s headlines – but Mon Mothma’s radical speech was written two years ago * Warning: this contains spoilers for episode nine of Andor season two Since it started in 2022, the Star Wars spin-off Andor has proved an unexpectedly bolshie addition to the Disney-owned mega-franchise. By portraying worker uprisings, surveillance states, sexual violence and prison industrial complexes, showrunner Tony Gilroy added fresh political nuance and human stakes to George Lucas’s endless galactic civil war. And since its April premiere, the show’s second and final season has only doubled down. In the first episode, viewers saw smarmy spin doctors from the Empire’s “Ministry of Enlightenment” discuss how to “weaponise” galactic opinion to manufacture public approval for ethnic cleansing on the planet Ghorman. News anchors parrot Imperial talking points, while the military plots a long game: to provoke an uprising from “rebels you can depend on to do the wrong thing” to justify a mass crackdown – all in service of a long-planned land and resources grab. Continue reading...

By calling a genocide a genocide, Andor just made its most political point yet

Hannah Kent: ‘I was kind of having a second adolescence’ The acclaimed writer on Iceland, euphoria and how a box of her own teenage writings made her reckon with the story she had told about herself

“It’s intoxicating, it’s such a heavy process,” Kent reflects. “You have these moments of discovery which can completely shift your perspective. It’s almost euphoric.”

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Cover image for Slick: Australia's Toxic Relationship With Big Oil by Royce Kurmelovs.

Slick's up for an award at the 2025 NSW Literary Awards and there is a People's Choice category. If any of you out there want to support my work, or just want to make an oil executive sad, consider throwing me a vote. Takes two secs and cut off is 7 May: form.typeform.com/to/iRmKIe8U?...

When I wrote my Murdoch book in 2022 I thought maybe Welcome to Country discourse was too settled to put this story on page one — but Australia’s laziest culture warriors love reheating old material

“I remember saying, ‘Gosh, I feel like I’m in Downton Abbey in Star Wars’.”

Profiled Genevieve O’Reilly ahead of Andor S2 ✨

New Jennifer Mills novel 🚨 Bung it in the diary and join us at the State Library in June

Slick A riveting expose of the global oil industry’s multi-decade conspiracy to muddy the waters around the science of climate change and use the Australian government to undermine worldwide efforts to address environmental devastation.

If you enjoy my work and my shenanigans, I've got a new book, Slick, out through UQP which was recently shortlisted for the Walkley book award. If already you have a copy and you liked it, help spread the word with a review. If you don't have a copy yet, consider picking up a copy.

Just so you know Elias I regularly cite this tweet as the TLDR version of my Murdoch book

$80 million for arts sector in landmark state cultural policy - News | InDaily, Inside South Australia Arts South Australia will be relaunched as CreateSA, along with $80 million in newly announced funding over four years.

“Art must be continued to be democratised. Art should not and cannot be expected to rely on the generosity of benefactors, nor should it be the exclusive preserve of hobbyists with a strong and healthy independent income.” - Premier Peter Malinauskas

www.indailysa.com.au/news/just-in...